Home Improvement Advice on How to Fit a Carpet Yourself
November 17th, 2009Home improvement enthusiasts are delighted to discover that quality carpet is really simple to come by these days. Drop in to your local carpet retailer and order the design of your choice and wait for the carpet to arrive. Then, you can ask for the carpet to be trimmed and installed or you can decide to fit the carpet yourself. It’s uncomplicated for stairs and straight hallways but much harder for those awkwardly shaped spaces. Nonetheless with the appropriate tools and know-how, you’ll have a wonderful looking room at the end of your hard graft.Preparatory work Make sure your flooring underneath where your carpet is going is clean and free of all debris and nails. The most pleasing results for carpet has always been with clean and flat surfaces. Fasten your carpet gripper around the edging of the entire room. Leave a gap at least one and half times the thickness of your chosen carpet. The gripper will come with an angled edge on one side which needs to go closest to the wall. Fitting the Underlay Under laying is very useful for fitting carpets for a couple of reasons. The initial one is that it cushions the carpet and another is that it acts like sound proofing lessening impact noises from individuals walking across it. To lay down underlay you have to ensure that it overlaps on top of your grippers you installed. You should lay it in strips and staple along the inside of the carpet grippers. Once that is completed, trim all excess. Now the carpet… Start with a piece of carpet that overlaps the edge of the floor by about 5 inches. You can always trim off this excess after. To cut your initial section, use the longest part of the floor and then add the extra 5 inches to the measurement. Fold back the carpet piece over on itself and cut through the piece with a knife tool. If your room is large enough for two pieces then repeat the process once more with a second piece. Where the two pieces touch, slightly overlap the two edges and trim off the excess again. Use some seaming tape to bind the two edges together. Use a seaming iron to make the adhesive stick the pieces together. The easy part of the job now involves using a carpet stretcher to tug the edge of the carpet across the grippers we fixed at the beginning. Push the carpet over using the stretcher and the tacks will fasten firmly on to the underside of the carpet. Cut off any excess and what you should be left with is a fantastic looking carpet floor for you to enjoy for years to come.
